Dust Storms Sweep Through from Sydney to Brisbane

Boy I love this country! As a born and bred Brit, I just love talking about the weather. But I thought the Australian climate would become a little boring. Hot and sunny with clear blue skies every day is lovely to live in but not much to talk about.

But I underestimated Australia!

September 21, 2009, 7:09 pm, weather warning issued in South Australia. Severe storms with the accompanying golf ball sized hailstones, lightning, strong winds and heavy rain were set to batter most of the state.

“In some areas the roads have been all but impassable because of the size of the trees that have fallen,” said State Emergency Services (SES) west coast regional duty officer Tony Stockham.

September 22, 2009, 11:41 am, weather warning issued in Alice Springs. This was the news release for that one…….

The Bureau of Meteorology is warning people living or travelling in the south-eastern Alice Springs district to expect severe weather.

Senior forecaster Angeline Prasad says residents should secure anything that could become a projectile and she is urging drivers to be careful.

“We are expecting damaging wind gusts up to 90 kilometres per hour,” she said.

September 23, 2009, 11am, Brisbane……

So what colour was the sky really? This is how my Nikon digital still camera saw it…..

NOT "hot and sunny with clear blue skies"

There are lots of videos on YouTube showing all different weird shades and colours, this was one of my favourites over at Broken Hill, which is about 700 miles west of Sydney. If there is an “epicentre” to a dust storm, this may well have been it….

Each camera may have seen things differently, but for sure places were pink, places were orange, places were red and places were yellowy grey. And everywhere was certainly weird.

But this was an unusual event. I spoke today with somebody who lived in Sydney for 16 years and he has never seen anything like it. Rumour is that this kind of thing last happened in 1966! So who knows, perhaps England can win the World Cup again.

I'm BobinOz and I moved to Australia in November 2007 after living in England for a very long time. Why did I move and what's it like here? All this and more answered right here at Bobinoz. Click here to read more on my about me page.